“Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners, and if you kick us all out, you’ll have nothing to watch except for football and mixed martial arts, which are not arts,” Meryl said in her speech.

“There was nothing good about it, but it did its job,” Meryl said during the speech, referencing Donald‘s mocking of disabled reporter Serge Kovaleski. “It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out my head because it wasn’t in a movie, it was in real life. That instinct to humiliate when it’s modeled by someone in a public platform, it filters down into everyone’s life because it gives permission for others to do the same.”

“Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence,” Meryl added. “When the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose…We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage … We’re going to need them going forward and they’re going to need us to safeguard the truth.”